


give a little, get a lot (that's just how you are with love)

by brokenspaces



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:01:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24991960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokenspaces/pseuds/brokenspaces
Summary: Saccharina made it a point to know herself. She knew she was only one thing in the world that was really and truly hers. When everything (inevitably) went to shit, the smoke would clear, and no matter what power she would hold, everything would be taken from her. The only thing that couldn’t be taken from her was her own identity. Saccharina had made herself into something useful, something that would hold steady. She spent years honing herself into Saccharina of the House of Frostwhip.
Relationships: Caramelinda Rocks/Lazuli Rocks, like... vaguely - Relationship
Comments: 3
Kudos: 17





	give a little, get a lot (that's just how you are with love)

**Author's Note:**

> just banging this out before all of it can be relegated to conjecture on wednesday lol  
> hang out with me @escapistcatontheinternet

Saccharina made it a point to know herself. She knew she was only one thing in the world that was really and truly hers. When everything (inevitably) went to shit, the smoke would clear, and no matter what power she would hold, everything would be taken from her. The only thing that couldn’t be taken from her was her own identity. Saccharina had made herself into something useful, something that would hold steady. She spent years honing herself into Saccharina of the House of Frostwhip.

Saccharina knew herself the way an artist knew a masterpiece.

The blank canvas: a tragedy. An unwanted princess. A mother she never knew. A father she knew only from stories. Left in the hands of zealots. 

Saccharina was one face of many in the nunnery. She was a disciple of the Bulb first, Saccharina Ghee second. That was driven into her head until she took it as fact. It was almost a comfort, knowing you were a pawn in a cosmic game, that none of the responsibility fell on your shoulders. Pawns had worth. Pawns were useful. So Saccharina Ghee made herself into the most useful pawn. Her devotion was useful. Her heritage was not. How desperately she wanted to be useful. The others looked so happy to be useful. (She wasn’t happy, not with anything, but she assumed that it was an issue within herself and adjusted accordingly.)

Then the magic came. The magic was the colors chosen in which she was painted. It was the first thing that was truly hers. She still remembered that night, dreaming of a tall woman that felt like home pressing power into her palms. She didn’t realize who it was until she went to get a pencil from the mug on her desk that Saccharina had woken up when it was still dark outside, something thrumming in her veins. With a thought, that something came to fruition, and she cupped the light, careful. Saccharina had heard of magic. The priest spoke of witches and shadows and demons. This wasn’t  _ that _ . This wasn’t shameful. This was hers. This, she realized as she rolled thunder into the sky, was useful. 

(Maybe it would have been harder for her to lose belief in them if they hadn’t first. No one believed that the scrappy ice cream girl abandoned at the doorstep was the daughter of the king. They didn’t trust her? Fine. Samesies.)

Saccharina didn’t tell anyone about the storm in her blood. She kept it to herself, saving it for long nights curled under her bedsheets, listening to the voice of someone named  _ Lazuli _ whisper secrets in her ear. With the magic came the doubt, and with the doubt came Saccharina. It was here that she learned to distrust.

Of course, she got caught. Saccharina’s magic was not discreet. It was a badly balanced glass of wine, waiting to spill over and ruin the metaphorical tablecloth. Saccharina was not as naive as she had been. Still, she was raised by them. She thought that… well, she didn’t quite know what she thought. 

All Saccharina knew was that one moment her aunt’s shadow was cast across the room, guiding the light between her fingers, and the next there was a noise and her head had whipped around. Then the pain came. That’s how it felt like the first time: a noise, her head turning from the force of it, then fire blooming across her cheek. The next hit didn’t have such pretense. It was just a crunching noise that made her wince all by itself. The third had her coughing for air. Fourth, again. After that, she lost the presence of mind to keep track. Someone was shouting something. There was light, she thinks, a prayer screamed past any sort of reverence. She watched blood drip across the carpet. With a start, she realized it was hers. Saccharina reached for Lazuli’s shadow, but her hand was caught and she was reeling backward again. Something crackled at her fingers and the next hit was even harder. Her head crashed against the bed-frame. A priest looked down on her, something desperate in his eyes. 

Fear, she thought, that’s what that is. She smelled cool sugar, saw Lazuli’s silhouette on the wall. The priest caught her eyeline and stared at the wall, then back to her. He didn’t know what she saw, but he feared it. She could tell that much before another crash and everything going dark. 

The fear is what she remembered the most. Fear was useful in that it was one of the greatest unifiers. It drove people to do things they would never dream of doing on their own. Saccharina probably could use fear. She thought about this in a hungry haze. They told her she was meditating on her actions. Saccharina was meditating on how much this just felt like they were starving her. She stared at the spot in the carpet where she still hadn’t cleaned out all the blood.  _ It could have been worse _ , the nun cleaning her wound said with a wink, like this was a slap on the wrist. It could have been worse. Saccharina thought of that as they brought her out again, as they soothingly told her she was just confused. She definitely didn’t like being called  _ confused _ . Saccharina Ghee was given options. They  _ trusted _ her enough. She was old enough now to have options. They knew that she would choose the right one. Saccharina was still useful.

Her wounds healed. Her place at the table was set. She said the prayers that were screamed over her beaten body before she went to bed. Saccharina tried so hard to go back to how things were. Her magic didn’t get the memo. 

It built up inside of her. She couldn’t sleep, for all the noise it made banging on her ribs, begging to be let out.  _ Just once _ .  _ No one would know _ . Cool sugar and shadows and a feeling like home.

Saccharina couldn’t pretend to be surprised when someone burst through her door and hit her. 

Fear, she thought as she stared at the new stain in her carpet, was very effective. She was missing enough meals that people whispered when she walked through the halls. They parted around her. No one looked at her anymore. She was given a second chance, but it was too late. She had lost her place. 

Someone whispered something while looking right at her. Saccharina wondered if she could use fear. 

As she looked at the ashes of what used to be a section of the library, as her peers ran and screamed, as she felt a familiar grip on her wrist dragging her to the dark room again, she decided she didn’t like how it felt to use fear. 

Later, she reached for Lazuli to give her an answer. Her stomach lurched at the thought. The shadows stayed shadows. The air smelled of blood and dust. 

Saccharina had no more time to think of the adults. They beat her. They starved her. They gave her options. They feared her. 

The priest smiled and called her naive again. Saccharina considered giving him a reason to fear her. She thought about a legend and a painting of her, scratched out as her most grotesque, another yawning demon in a book to fear. 

Saccharina Ghee smiled at the priest and chose his options and went back to her room. Saccharina Frostwhip climbed out of the window and ran. 

There was really no point in keeping the name of someone she never met. She would make her own way in the world. Saccharina Frostwhip, first of her line. 

The outside world was not the nunnery. She didn’t have a meal ready every day. She didn’t have a bed to sleep in every night. Sometimes, she did. Saccharina also didn’t have to hide under bedsheets and flinch when someone praised the Bulb. Sometimes, she did. 

The outside world was, surprisingly, like the nunnery. If you acted the right way, if you were useful enough, you got a place. There was a written set of rules one had to follow lest they are punished. And there was an unspoken set of rules one followed if you didn’t want to get dragged out of your bed and beat into the ground. Of course, in the real world, if you were  _ useful _ enough, you got power, and power meant you got a certain level of leniency on how many rules you get to break. If you got enough power, you could make the rules. 

Magic was interesting because it was somewhere between Capital-P-Power and the sort of broken rule that means you have to sleep with one eye open. It was scary, the first few weeks, because she still froze whenever someone grabbed her, still had to wait until it got desperate to let the magic rip from her and leave bloodstains on whatever clothes she could get. Saccharina was a fast learner. After those first few weeks, she knew, generally, how to open and close the proverbial tap. She still couldn’t tell it what to do, but at least she didn’t have to wash blood out of her shirt every morning.

Her first thought was to go to her father. The nunnery had said he was kind and strong. Saccharina wasn’t in the business of trusting the nunnery or the Bulb, ever again, but she had read of his dead sisters and she knew about her mother and knew he was a tragedy, just like her. She had heard news of the twins when she was six. Saccharina liked taking care of the younger kids at the nunnery. It made her feel needed. She often thought she would like to have little sisters. She watched every puppet show she could see on the street. The king was always brave. Her sisters were beautiful and smart. The queen was benevolent and warm and she would understand. Saccharina loved how they talked in those plays. It gave them a sense of authority she never had. Saccharina practiced it every night before she slept.  _ I am Saccharina of House Frostwhip, Rightful Heir to the Throne. _

That name grew as Saccharina grew. Living on nothing, she learned the reality of the world that the Bulbian nunnery had taught them to fear. She learned not every rule was fair. Her loud response to unfairness attracted her to the crowd that taught her words like  _ politics  _ and  _ anarchy _ . ‘Rightful’ heir turned to ‘legal’ heir. Saccharina was louder about the Bulbian church. Saccharina of House Frostwhip, Lawful Heir to the Throne, Enemy to the Faith. She figured out for herself that she wouldn't be of any use to the royal court, and that they didn’t need someone so loud and uncontrolled. 

Saccharina was still royalty. She still wanted the power to make the rules, to stop the people that drag little kids out of their beds, or to kill the systems that keep people in the dust. The only thing was, a queen needed a kingdom. 

Saccharina made one. She studied how to be liked, because she’d decided the moment she became the first of her house, she wasn’t going to half-ass anything. She learned what made people like her and what didn’t, how to smile when you want them to feel safe around them and how to smile when you wanted to warn people away. Always smiling, though. 

People liked her, she learned, because she seemed untouchable. She hated that.

They wanted to be liked by someone untouchable because they, themselves, were scared and hurt and tragic. They needed her to protect them, or at least get the courage to protect themselves. 

Saccharina threw herself into magic. The dreams of Lazuli couldn’t be induced by potion or spell, so Saccharina searched for her in other ways. She led her kingdom to collect the last scraps of her aunt’s work. 

The secrets she learned were very, very useful. 

The point of having power was moot if you had no control. Inversely, if you have killer control over your power, it will only grow. Lazuli’s books gave Saccharina the power she never had. She could do so much more than open and close the tap. She could turn the cola into cream. The only problem with having that much power was that it gave you attention, and Candia was still sucking the Bulb’s dick. She was called the High Priestess of the Sweetening Path, Archmage of Lost Sucrosia by those who stood by her. She was called The Sundae Sorceress by those who didn’t. She took each name on with pride. As things got hot on land, she went to the sea. 

No laws in international waters. 

Storm-Captain of the Frosted Sea was accurate, but she had taken a liking to the sound of Witch-Queen of the Dairy Sea. People called her other names when they first met her and just saw a smiling woman with a loud laugh, but she didn’t have to adopt  _ all _ of them. There, she reigned supreme. Her enemies despised her and her followers adored her. She watched it grow from the margins of society gathering around her soapbox to fellow rebels to scholars searching for Lazuli, until she truly had a house. She had transcended useful into necessary. Necessary, bordering on  _ wanted _ . She started to creep onto Joren’s bit of Candia and stayed away from the rest of it. 

Saccharina knew she was never going to be royalty. She didn’t know if she wanted to be. She knew that royalty wasn’t all it sounded like. She could barely stand to be as watched as she was, and those of House Frostwhip weren’t judgemental folks. She wanted to be able to talk with people, hang out with whoever she wanted, to fight on the front lines, and be loud.

Saccharina would never be Crown Princess Saccharina Ghee of House Rocks. That didn’t matter. Saccharina had a house, a castle, a kingdom. She had an army and enemies. Saccharina had power and control and she had something to fight for. She was sure that she was content. 

Then everything went to shit. Saccharina got the story in chunks in between her little skirmishes with House Jawbreaker. Maybe if they were served to her in equal parts, she would have reacted better. 

The first bit was something unsurprising yet full of potential at once: It was time for the Emperor to name an heir. Nobody and everybody knew that King Amethar was the first choice. That was easy enough to swallow that Saccharina only spent a minute on the panic before moving on. One rock went loose, and it was quickly replaced. 

Then each new development came rolling after another like an avalanche. 

AN ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT ON KING AMETHAR CROWN PRINCESS JET REFUSES THE THRONE JAWBREAKER’S SON IS A WITCH CONSPIRACY AGAINST KING AMETHAR THE EMPEROR IS DEAD THE KING IS EXCOMMUNICATED THE KING WAS MARRIED THE PRINCESSES ARE BASTARDS JOREN IS KING CANDIA IS AT WAR

Saccharina blinked. She listened, carefully, on what grounds he was excommunicated. Her smile almost dropped. Almost. She excused herself on the pretense of planning their next move. She closed the door to her room, softly. 

Saccharina had been close. She was so fucking close to contentment. She was needed here. She was wanted. Every single person here chose her. She was over some family that she never knew that didn’t want to see her. She wasn’t a child. She had crawled and clawed and killed for her power. Saccharina was a Queen. 

Wait, shit, that was the problem--

\--

It was simple. It had taken her a few hours (days), but she had broken down the concept in her mind. 

Saccharina would now have a use: as the product of his lawful marriage, she was the next in line, not Joren. By taking over, Candia would no longer be at war. Everything would be alright with the world. It didn’t matter whether or not they liked her. They would need her, which was even better. 

She wouldn’t be a part of the family. She didn’t care if she was part of their family. Saccharina only had to be diplomatic enough that they could stand to work with her. She just had to be useful.

That’s what she had told herself. 

\--

They didn’t like her. 

Saccharina didn’t know what she expected. She didn’t expect them to stop everything to worship her. 

She still tried. She rolled out her best smile, thought of their every need, laid out how she could be useful. Saccharina spoke in her practiced prose, enunciating and forgiving and then forgiving again. Assured them she was not asking anything of them. She liked them. She liked to see Lazuli’s fingerprints all over the monk and the guard. She knew they had the same desperate connection to Lazuli that people like Lazuli warranted. She liked to see how little of Joren, all brash and brute strength was in his son, how sincere he was, and how dangerous he could seem to be despite that. She liked Ruby, who was all defiance and loyalty. King Amethar was the closest to trying, and she liked his efforts. Beyond that, she liked how much of herself she saw in him. She wondered if he screamed when he was crowned king. She even appreciated Carmelinda. Carmelinda could have been much worse to her. 

It was a mess of timing. A new princess to appear at the death of another? Even by watching how they all moved around a space shaped like her dead sister she felt grief. She couldn’t imagine what it was like to meet the convenient product of an old marriage after the death of one’s child. She tried to be grateful that they weren’t worse to her. (Still, she knew that Carmelinda’s lack of rage was most likely a worse sign than if she was also snapping at her.) 

Saccharina gave Amethar an out for not jumping into familial bonding. He looked tired. He took it very, very quickly. Saccharina smiled graciously and said  _ forgiven, forgiven, forgiven _ . He didn’t bring it up again. Saccharina understood.

Joren’s son liked her, as did the family’s guard and distant cousin. Saccharina took her small victories. 

After being surrounded by admirers for years, she was suddenly faced with being tolerated. Not hated, really. But not loved. Just a necessary evil they all had to handle. It was an utter lack of passion. 

Save Ruby. 

Ruby raged at her. The hurt, the betrayal, all of it, Saccharina watched get mixed up and misfired to hit her. There was something cathartic about the hate of it, how scathing  _ every _ look was to her, how everything Saccharina did was the most offensive thing she could have done. There was no  _ margin _ for error. It was the only option. It was almost like the familial, unconditional love that Saccharina had seen before but… not. She really  _ meant _ something to Ruby. 

Jesus, this was fucked up. 

She didn’t think of that. Instead, Queen Saccharina of House Frostwhip smiled, made it sweet. She knew who she was. She was hated by many and loved by more. She was a magician and a warrior and a queen. She was loud and polite and calculating and impulsive. She was a woman of many talents.

Mostly, she was useful. 


End file.
